


lethlogica

by esbis



Category: Noli Me Tangere & Related Works - José Rizal
Genre: M/M, falling in love all over again while staring at your s/o at 11 pm, mostly gani's musings comparing paulita and basilio, summary is very casual-light but the actual thing is very sleepy-lethargic-idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 13:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16063907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esbis/pseuds/esbis
Summary: lethlogica(n.) that thing where you can't think of the word for something no matter how much you wrack your mind





	lethlogica

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written anything in a year but i might as well post this na lang huhuh

It’s a different kind of love, he thinks one evening.

It’s a thought that lingers in the back of his mind, stirring every once in a while as if to tell him he has to think about it even more. This time it creeps up on him, nudging gently, enough that he has to look up from the blank page of his journal to look at Basilio, almost asleep across the table, one hand dipped into the sungka board from an abandoned game. 

Everything is washed in moonlight; pale silver glints off glossy cowry shells, seeps into the darkness of the wooden table and the other’s skin. The candle in the lantern has grown dim long ago.

It’s a different kind of love. He bounces the sentence around his head, as if jogging the idea, and yet the words refuse to flow. A different kind of love. It’s almost ten in the evening, and Basilio doesn’t seem like he’d go ahead if Isagani told him he should go to sleep. There are impressions on the page where he crossed words out too hard on the previous one, gentle white indents that have him thinking of the creases on Basilio’s temple, where the folds of his sleeve dig into his skin. 

It’s the kind of love he wouldn’t be able to write about and get right.

(—of course he’s tried, but—)

The difference between Paulita and Basilio is the number of poems he’s written about each one of them. 

It’s easier to wax poetic with Paulita. Easier to capture things larger than life in bleeding ink, to mimic every epic about star-crossed lovers there have been, to write about beauty comparable to jasmine flowers and Aphrodite. Love as it should be — or so the stories say. It’s _easy_. Somewhere, wherever the wind had carried them, were ashes that were once vessels to the ease with which Isagani Florentino had bled out his love for Paulita Gomez in fifty-eight verses and maybe more. 

The papers (poems). And the bridges. 

There were a lot of ashes that night.

Basilio is...something else entirely. Where Paulita smells of rose-lavender-sampaguitas misting up crystalline vials Basilio has the scent of guava-lagundi-tuba leaves and several other medicinal herbs pressed into his fingerprints. Where Paulita carries herself with the unassuming, yet predatory grace of a swan Basilio only reminds him of a sparrow, how common and humble and _present_ he is, everywhere in Isagani’s life.

Though, he amends, it wouldn’t be right to call Basilio’s presence simple.

Underwhelming? No.

Homely.

Modest.

Familiar.

He can’t even think of one word close enough to it, let alone a whole poem.

“Huy.”

He looks up.

Basilio’s half-awake again, slow and subdued in the gentle fire. Another thing: where Paulita is heart-stopping heart-racing beauty in the light, Basilio is calming. With him the heart grows warmer, grows three sizes bigger and pushes up all against the fragile cusp of his ribcage, pulses deep slow beats that feel like coming back to the sea.

“Ang ingay mo mag-isip,” Basilio mumbles into his sleeve, his last word catching on a slow and sleepy laugh and there it goes again, the _thump thump thump_ that makes Isagani want to say _yes_ and fall into bed right now, in his arms.

Comforting.

Peaceful.

“Halata ba,” he says dryly, though unable to wrestle down the smile on his lips.

Even here he runs out of words. Where he isn’t the valiant village boy coming to woo the fairest lady in the land. Something about exhilaration makes every word right; flourish and finery had made him bold, had kept the flirtations coming as easily as if he was reading off a script of his own making.

Or he has yet to read of the simple protagonist who deeply and profoundly loves his friend, in all aspects of the word and whatever (he hopes) he can be beyond it. 

Then again. They always said you could (should) write your own story. 

It’s not the kind of grand, life-changing romance he’s dreamt of, that he thought he would end up in (though he isn’t complaining, at all). He didn’t realize it be so close, so uncomplicated. Still hung up on the moment he turned around and realized it had always been right beside him the whole time. Still working out how much this will change. Still trying to fit new feelings over an old relationship, take note of where things overlap and— 

(—so he’s a little lost here—)

And it’s fine, because Basilio says, “come to bed?”, poses it as a question even though Isagani knows it should be an order (it would be, if he was a lot less languid, less lenient, less drunk off the kind of deep sleepiness only late-night conversations under moonlight can cause).

“Alright,” Isagani replies. It’s his hand that warms Basilio’s when he takes it. He lets himself be led from one dim room to another, blanketed by cricketsong and the tender rustling of clothes and feet. Here where the bed is warm and the body curling between his arms is warmer still.

And they breathe. Meld together. Isagani feels, for now.

The words can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> oo inantok ako sobra nung sinusulat (at madaliang in-edit) ko to


End file.
